Quotes About Wisdom

Whether the succeeding generation is to be more virtuous than their predecessors I cannot say; but I am sure they will have more worldly wisdom, and enough, I hope, to know that honesty is the 1st chapter in the book of wisdom.

Beware of the half-truth; you may have gotten hold of the wrong half.

Never kick a fresh turd on a hot day.

...there was no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.

A new broom sweeps clean but the old broom knows the corners.

I dusted once. It came back. I'm not falling for that again.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

We may be the intelligent species, but we are certainly not the smartest!

Thus he learned hurt; and on top of it he learned to avoid hurt, first, by not incurring the risk of it...

It was idle, he knew, to get between a fool and his folly; while two or three fools more or less would not alter the scheme of things.

And, when the whim changes, it is most easy and delightfully disconcerting to play with the respectable and cowardly bourgeois fetishes and to laugh and epigram at the flitting god-ghosts and the debaucheries and follies of wisdom.

But the dog knew; all its ancestry knew, and it had inherited the knowledge. And it knew that it was not good to walk abroad in such fearful cold.

The old-timer had been very serious in laying down the law that no man must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below. Well, here he was; he had had the accident; he was alone; and he had saved himself. Those old-timers were rather womanish, some of them, he thought. All a man had to do was to keep his head, and he was all right. Any man who was a man could travel alone.

Intelligent men are cruel. Stupid men are monstrously cruel

Sabía que era inútil interponerse entre un necio y su necedad.

Sitka Charley started. There had been more than one shot, yet there was but one other rifle in the party. He gave a fleeting glance at the men who lay so quietly, smiled viciously at the wisdom of the trail, and hurried on to meet the Men of the Yukon.

And there came a day when the hawk's shadow did not drive him crouching into the bushes. He had grown stronger and wiser, and more confident. Also, he was desperate. So he sat on his haunches, conspicuously in an open space, and challenged the hawk down out of the sky. For he knew that there, floating in the blue above him, was meat, the meat his stomach yearned after so insistently.

the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.

Era más viejo que sus años. Vinculaba el pasado al presente, y la eternidad latía en él en un ritmo poderoso que dominaba todas sus acciones.

It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.

Amos, que não percebia nada de química, observava-o com tranquila curiosidade. Mas Jees Uck, com uma fé profunda na sabedoria dos brancos e particularmente na sabedoria de Neil Bonner, Jees Uck que não só não sabia nada como tinha noção da sua ignorância, fitava-o no rosto, mais do que nas mãos.

Quando quer que um homem surgisse e quisesse ir adiante, todos os que ficaram parados no tempo diziam que ele estava regredindo e devia ser morto. E a gente pobre ajudava a apedrejá-lo, pois era tola. Todos nós éramos tolos, exceto os que engordavam e não trabalhavam. Os tolos eram chamados de sábios, e os sábios eram apedrejados. Homens que trabalhavam não tinham o suficiente para comer, e homens que não trabalhavam comiam demais.

Quanto a me, non mi preoccupo mai di sapere se abbia ragione o no. Questo non ha importanza alcuna: l'uomo non può mai giungere all'ultima verità.

It was illumination, a great light in the darkness of his ignorance, and he read poetry more avidly than ever.